World Ice Championships, Part 1—Leslie

One reason Robin and I decided to come to Fairbanks now is that each March the city is host to the World Ice Art Championships. This event, one of the premier ice carving competitions in the world, is a month-long extravaganza featuring more than 70 teams. Competitors come to Fairbanks from around the world to create magnificent sculptures out of massive blocks of ice.

The competition doesn’t open until this coming Tuesday, but Elizabeth (one of the couple with whom we are doing our house trade) took Robin and me out to the grounds on Thursday to check out the scene. What we found were hundreds of blocks of glacial-blue ice, set out in rows and ready to be distributed to the teams of artists. (Note that the photo at the top of this blog is a shot I took of these blocks.)

yours truly, showing the size of the ice blocks
[photo: Elizabeth Shapland]

The blocks are cut from local ponds. As explained on one website,

[b]ecause the water is so pure and the Alaskan Interior’s winter temperatures so cold, the ice [in these ponds] forms quickly and densely, which gives it a slight glacial blue tint. It is so clear that a person can read a newspaper through a four-foot block of ice. Sculptors have pronounced Fairbanks’ ice as the best in the world for sculpting.

The two main competitions are the single-block and the multi-block sculptures. As you can tell from the photo above, the multi-block sculptures end up being enormous. You can see a short video of the process here.

Once completed, the carvings are illuminated with colored lights at night time. (Check out some photos from past years here.)

This is a shot of one of a couple of blocks being transported from the staging area to where it will be carved:


And here you can see some of the carvings being done for the children’s area, which will feature ice slides and animal art:


We will be purchasing season passes, so stay tuned for updates as the competition progresses!